As a fan Colin attended matches with his dad in the early 90s when Keith Wright, Mickey Weir and Keith Houchen were plying their trade at Easter Road. He says these players gave him his first thoughts about being a professional footballer.
“I really liked Keith Wright when I was growing up. I wouldn’t say that I ever actually intended to be exactly like Wright, Weir or Houchen, but they are the guys I watched as a kid.”
Colin’s first experience on the Easter Road pitch came before he played for or against the club. A goal in the Scottish County Cup final was his first exposure to being on the pitch rather than in the stands.
“I played at Easter Road when I was about 14 in a Scottish Cup final - I scored in the game and I’ll always remember that. The slope on the pitch in those days stands out for me, the stadium has changed a hell of a lot since then.”
As a young footballer, Colin was full of confidence and determined to make his way in the game. Even before leaving school he felt a life awaited him in professional football and he believes there’s a chance a move to Hibs could have come around sooner than it did.
“I always thought I would be a football player. I felt I was good enough to go on to be a professional, even before I left school there was something there that I knew I would play.
“I think I could have gone to Hibs as a young boy but I decided to go to Dunfermline at the time. When I went to Dunfermline, I was just concentrating on being a football player rather than having a huge dream of playing for Hibs.”
A career which took him from Dunfermline to Kilmarnock via loan spells at Alloa Athletic and Clyde meant that there were many times when Colin lined up against Hibs, with his family in the stands left in a difficult situation.
“When we were playing against Hibs it was a game, I wanted to do well in. Being a Hibs supporter, I wanted to try and impress people who were watching the game because I came from the area.
“I always had a good record against Hibs before I signed for the club, I’d scored quite a few goals against them, and they seemed to be a lucky team for me to play against.
“If my parents weren’t watching me, they would have been at a Hibs game so on those days it was probably a special occasion for them. I think my family started to support me as a player rather than the team at the time.
“They would come and watch all of my games no matter where it was, so when we were playing at Hibs it was a home game for us all.”
Colin feels starting his career at Dunfermline Athletic and then moving to Kilmarnock meant there was less pressure on him to perform. He believes that being an Edinburgh-born footballer would have made it harder to make it to the top if he’d started at Hibs.
“I think if I had started off at Hibs, I would have felt more pressure trying to break through than I did at Dunfermline. At Dunfermline I played when I was really young and when I went to Kilmarnock, I always felt it was a lot easier than playing for Hibs.
“If you come from Edinburgh and you’re going through to Kilmarnock, if you have a bad game you can just drive back to Edinburgh and nobody knows you and you just get on with your life. If you play for Hibs and you have a bad game then you can read all about it in the local papers the next day.
“There is a lot more pressure playing for Hibs especially if you’re a supporter – that pressure can come from yourself; it was probably for the best that I built up to it.
“I think it would be hard for a young Hibs fan to come through and actually break into the team – there would just be that little bit of extra pressure on you, whereas after I had been at Kilmarnock it was just like I was going out to play, just going to enjoy it.”
After becoming a regular on the scoresheet for Kilmarnock, Colin started to think a dream move back to his hometown of Edinburgh with Hibs might be possible.
“I played against Hibs a few times but when I went to Kilmarnock and started doing well, I thought about the chance of moving to Hibs, it was around about then I thought to myself that it might be a realistic.
“I spoke to Mixu after John Collins left and he came to a couple of games. I actually got injured in one of them after 70 minutes and Alan Combe told me that Mixu had left after I went off. I knew for a wee while that there was a chance it would happen but I did have other options as well because my contract at Kilmarnock was running out.”
A hat-trick in a match which ends 6-6 is always likely to feature in prominent memories and Colin is reminded of the famous midweek meeting at Fir Park regularly, a game in which he thinks he could have scored even more than three goals.
“I hit the post in the first half at Fir Park and in the second half everything that came in the box was going nowhere near me, it was going to Stokesy or Deek.
“It was one of those games where I could have ended up scoring six or seven but the ball just landed in different places in the second half, but in the first half I was in the right place at the right time.
“Three days after that we went to play Dundee United at Tannadice and I scored two. It was probably my biggest achievement during my time at Hibs as we qualified for Europe.”
Another memorable day for the Nish family was one filled with mixed emotions as Colin was on the losing side in a 5-1 Hibernian victory in the CIS Cup final at Hampden Park. With his Hibs supporting family in the stand, it was a strange situation to find himself in.
“My family were all at the 2007 League Cup final which was obviously a hugely disappointing day for everyone involved at Kilmarnock.
“It’s quite funny because it’s not like it was a cup final my family could go to as Hibs supporters. The squad had to go back to Kilmarnock afterwards so it was a disappointing day from our point of view – but I suppose if we were going to get beat in a cup final from anybody, I would prefer it to be Hibs.”
